It’s over.
Arsene is OUT.
A new future awaits.
We know very little about what’s actually going on with the status of the managerial interview process at the moment, but what we know for sure is now the season is finished, the club can talk to Bundesliga candidates and people from the Premier League. Next week, we’ll be able to meet with Serie A prospects.
So there it is, the final chapter in has been penned, and Arsene Wenger leaves Arsenal football club.
It’s hard to believe that after 22 years, the big man will no longer parade The Arsenal dugout.
No more 60th minute subs. No more zipper issues in the dugout. No debates about what the next steps should be.
Finally, we have something more to talk about than the golden 4-5 managers I’ve been tracking these past few weeks. Spanish media has linked us with the Basque manager Unai Emery, who has departed PSG after failing to move them to the next level in the Champions League.
Arsenal fans are starting to come to terms with the reality that Allegri is a dream that might not have much reality to it. I have no basis for saying that deal is dead outside the fact he still has unfinished business with Juventus, his press mutterings indicate he’ll be there next season, and his sporting director saying he thinks Juve will come to a solid agreement when they speak this summer.
Ahhh man, sometimes, fairytales end when the Princess drinks too much wine, slips on a glass shoe and falls out the window, landing on her pet dog.
That’s Arsene’s final year. A real harrowing experience. He’s currently setting the record for the worst away showing since Giroud met a model in Manchester hotel and forgot to flush her mobile down the toilet.
It was a tough game to watch, not because we were particularly shite, more because we were so easily carved up in defence. Simple penetrating balls and diagonal crosses into our defence provoked sheer panic and confusion.
Iheanacho opened the scoring after about 15 attempts to clear our area, Arsenal can’t even hoof properly. Superstar hero man-child Mavrapanos disgraced himself a minute later with a red card on 15 minutes. He tried to play a clever pass under pressure, slipped, then brought down his man. It was pretty clumsy, very Arsenal, and a deserved red even though it looked like there was cover to pick up his mistake. Remember the days we used to wear red cards like a badge of honour? I want those back…
Arsenal leveled through Auba in the second half, some powerful running and calm composure from AMN to deliver a cross, allowing Auba to score on his second attempt. The joy didn’t last, Jamie Vardy broke our hearts from the penalty spot after Mikki made a clutzy foul in the box. Mahrez capped things off with a surging run he shouldn’t have been able to make.
Wenger is on his way out, he’s not even working hard for excuses, he took time out to lament decisions and throw a skewer at the Premier League for voting against VAR.
“Overall I believe we played a great game today. Even with 10 against 11 we should win the game. I’m convinced what changed the game was the penalty. I have complaints about the red card as well but I think we dealt well with the situation. I would like to praise the team for the spirit they showed tonight.
“There is always a reason for the defeat, but if you isolate each game, it is unfortunate what happened tonight. I think the Premier League has voted against VAR and it is upsetting. It destroys me because we were in front of the rest of the world, and now we want to be behind.”
I’m not going to go hard at the man, he’s Everton’s problem now. All I will say is I’m happy he gave Jack a nudge in the right direction.
“I’ve given him only one (bit of) advice, stay at the club. The noises I have heard is that he will do it,”
Good news. I know he’s been rank average most of the season, but he’s never really been coached. Let’s see how he does under someone who can help him with his game, motivate him to love playing again, and rekindle some of that magic we know he has.
Onto the good stuff. Allegri won his title and made some interesting comments to the press that kind of lead you to believe that I am some sort of f*cking expert when it comes to calling the narrative. This from James Horncastle.
‘Allegri pretty chippy on RAI when asked if it’s the end of a cycle and what Juve’s limits are. Calls the line of questioning absurd, says the team can still improve, the [re]build is not over and “we’ll fight for the title next season.”‘
That man needs a CL on his resume, he has a great team at Juve, the club works around his skillset, and he’s a perfect match for them. A huge pay bump and a move to London is always going to be attractive, but he can take that move whenever he wants. I wonder whether he has the appetite for a rebuild at Arsenal? An incredible coach, the best we could land, I just really doubt the situation.
Jezza Wilson, messenger for the mid-West aristocracy that owns our club, just dropped some information uppers on us, and it reads fairly similar to what I’ve been ranting your way this week.
Arsenal do not want to approach managers in work at an inconvenient moment and so must wait until most of the major European leagues have finished before accelerating their process.
Arsenal are not settled yet on whether to go all out for an established current manager like Allegri or Monaco’s Leonardo Jardim or a younger head coach-style option. They want to conduct a full recruitment process and intend to make their appointment by at least the start of the World Cup next month.
You can just imagine tight Stan K sitting in the boardroom stroking his persian cat.
‘Oh the conundrum, £15m a year manager who will bring all his expensive friends or two young coaches we can house in Vik Akers cupboard. Whatever shall I do?’
JW goes on to talk through the challenges of GALACTICO managers versus the young bucks. A well-trodden path we’ve explored with you many times before in the past.
Mokbel of The Mail and JC at The Mirror are both going on a similar path with Allegri, Arteta and Vieira (probably sharing intel with each other). Below is where the combined journo-list is at.
Realistically, for me, it’s going to be the three I’ve highlighted in bold. I can’t see PV04 being in the mixer, I’m not sure he’s moved NYC on enough, though he does have a great tie to the fans. Allegri is going to be very expensive, and likely very demanding of the club, not just that, he’s kind of said he’ll be there next season.
Jardim has everything we need, but maybe lacks the excitement of a manager who has a sexy back story, but he’s ready and he’d do an incredible job. He’s worked under every condition imaginable, he beat Paris last year on a budget with young players, and he has built great defences in the past. He’s also pretty young, just one year short of Tuchel at 43 years old, pretty much the peak age top managers start winning big things.
Nagelsmann and Arteta have different superpowers. Nagelsmann has actually managed a club and proved a success. However, we can keep on banging on about him, but Rapha H reckons he’s too smart to move to Arsenal. He’s just in it for the ego kick with us, most likely with an eye on Bayern where he apparently fancies settling down with his lady friend. I’d love this guy, he oozes the ingredients you want. Enough experience to be dangerous, enough potential to rock the league. But if his club won’t let him go, it’s tough… that said, Arsenal knocking on your door with a once in a lifetime job in London replacing Wenger is pretty appealing and tough for any man to say no to.
I’m back defending Arteta today. Too many people critiquing him for the wrong reasons. The common one is he’s too much of a Wenger patsy. I think that notion is badly misguided. He’s a key member of Peps coaching staff who just won a Premier League by destroying the competition. City humiliated the most expensively assembled league in the world. They boast a better goal difference than United and Spurs combined.
… yet people still question Arteta’s talent and strength as a potential coach because he played out the final 5 years of his career in a Wenger banter team. You think Pep Guardiola would have a wet blanket Wenger clone into his coaching setup? You think he’d let a pushover run his training sessions? You think he chooses to lean on average thinkers in one of the most high-pressure jobs in the world? Please. You’re not landing a job with Pep (who fought off Pochettino for his signature) unless you bleed like him and can offer him something he doesn’t have himself. That’s the only way the elite coaches can survive in the modern era, they’re the sum of their team. He’d also come with the ‘everyone thinks I’m going to fail’ chip on his shoulder, which is a plus over someone like Allegri who doesn’t need to prove a thing. Sure, Arteta is inexperienced, he’d be the biggest risk on the list, there’d be a lot to learn on the job, but let’s not look at the suggestion of Arsenal hiring him like we’re zip lining in Gunnersaurus to have a crack.
The close-mindedness of some fans is unreal. The same people who’ve spent 10 years enabling a failing manager who once blamed our ‘mysterious’ injury pileups on rogue hair pills, are now chiming in on what it takes to lead Arsenal to the next level, is the next level, is the next level. Where was all this knowledge when there was actually a debate about Arsene Wenger using tactics after our 46th straight defeat to a top 6 team? Astounding carry-on from the ‘The players let him down’ crew, and the ‘Who else is there?’ Crouch End Tourettes Brigade.
Anyway, those be my final words for today. If the MSM Arsenal insiders crew has the list right, we’ve got a group of men who can move us in the right direction next season, don’t let someone on Twitter called @SabrosaHamburguesaᵌ tell you otherwise.
Right, see you in the comments!
Arsene Wenger has switched his LinkedIn profile status to THIRSTY AS before the season is out.
“I don’t look very good on the beach,”
“How long would I like to work for? As long as I feel I want to. But overall people look at your age and make an issue of it. It becomes a bit of discrimination. They don’t really look how you work and perform. They look ‘oh he is old’. I can understand that as I thought the same when I was young.”
“I like the English saying: ‘you have to live every day like it is your last’ and one day you will be right.”
It’s like for a moment there, I thought there’d be some sort of self-reflection from our favourite old goat, but no… he’s militantly deluded until the very end.
No point in going hard at him, I’d like the man to land himself a job, I just feel like him casting this season off as some sort of age discrimination issue is missing the point.
It’s game over for him, so I should leave it.
But then you read a little further on in the interview and it makes you a little sad inside. He really loves the game. He’s totally desperate to be in the mixer again, and how could we deny him?
“You know I didn’t miss a training session in 22 years, I never stayed in my office. Every day I was out there. That is something that I will miss.”
“I keep myself fit, I can still play! If I was really objective then I would pick myself every week. We have staff games. I don’t play with the players, they are a bit too quick for me.”
The thing is, where can you find a job that’ll take you if you can’t perform in this era? The two longest-serving managers in the Premier League now are Sean Dyche and Eddie Howe. You can’t even take a job at Stoke now and expect to last out three years. Football has such high stakes these days. I wish he’d just listen to those around him and take a bit of time off. Write a book, do some punditry, get a radio show… there’s so much he could do with his life that’d give him status and celebrity. I just don’t see things working out positively at Everton or PSG.
Onto more exciting things… Arsenal fans have a favourite managerial candidate on their lips.
He has trophies by the truck, truck, truck
Tactics like what, what, what
Allegri move your butt, butt, butt.
I think I’ll sing it again
The suave Italian has piqued our interest, and everyone has him at the top of their list. My view? He has unfinished business in the CL with a team more than capable of winning it. Do we really think he’s going to leave a squad that needs minor tweaking before he’s won the biggest trophy of them all? I also think he’s angling for a big pay rise. He earns a pittance compared to the big dogs in the EPL.
Marotta looked to dampen the fire…
“With Allegri, we have a great rapport that has always worked well and still continues that way,”
“At the right time, after we accomplish the Scudetto, we will talk about the future, which I’m sure will be full of satisfaction together.”
He doesn’t seem too worried.
Allegri is tier one kinda guy, he’s an unbelievable coach, and he’s on top of his game, but it’s hard to ignore that he’s working in one of the most efficient structures in Europe. Juve are a dominant force, they can buy the best players, everything there is perfect for him. Things weren’t so great when he was at Milan. he won one title when Milan were the best team in a weak league, he choked the next season with the best squad, then he finished third after a summer of decimation because he signed Mad Mario, then he was fired. He nearly choked against us in the CL in the heat of the banter era. Milan fans don’t reflect on him fondly.
I am not saying he’d not turn us into a better proposition, but is he really built to deliver on an Arsenal brief? Certain managers work incredibly well under certain structures, with certain types of players, with a certain amount of money. Milan didn’t work for him, but he’s crushing Serie A under Juve conditions.
That’s why I love the idea of Jardim or Nagelsmann. The Portuguese is particularly adept at working with minimal resource, he’s a great coach, and he’s dynamic enough to work with what he has at his disposal. The same can be said of Paulo Fonseca who is at Shaktar, he’s a coach first and foremost. They look at the tools they have, and build something out of nothing. They’re not cheque-book managers, they proper coaches who work to improve what they have (bit like Poch).
Nagelsmann is also really interesting, he’s a student of coaching, having never played at the highest level due to injury. He’s proved his mettle taking a team in big trouble to the heights on Champions League football nearly two seasons in a row. If he can extract that much potential out of a crop of players with an average salary of £20k a week, imagine what he could do to our comparable megastars? He’s potentially the Jose Mourinho of 2018, and we have the chance to make the early first move on him.
You know my POV on the Arteta rumblings. What I like about him is he’s being raved about by Pep G, he’s won a Premier League in season two, he’s being credited with developing players, The Times report that City have him in line to take over from Pep G, and the whole vision of Pep football is geared around intense education of exacting ways to play the game, underpinned by ruthless discipline. Pair Arteta with an experienced assistant like Buvac (mysteriously moved on), and you might have a very exciting combination of aggressive innovative football.
My point in all of this is there’s no one right answer. Each manager flourishes in different scenarios, sometimes experience is needed, sometimes an injection of naivety and youthful exuberance does the trick. The key for me in all of this is Arsenal make sure they build the right team around whoever comes in. It really is a roll of the dice whether all the stars align to make magic happen. Look at Carlo, Champions League winner at Real, booted out of Bayern with rumours of relaxed training and a lack of tactical preparation. Look at Mourinho at United, an elite pair of safe hands that’s sucking the joy out of Sanchez, Pogba and Rashford. Even Conte, when given the chance to exact more power over transfers blasted £200m on utter dross, taking Chelsea from 1st to 5th inside a season.
Arsenal can make success with an elite manager at the top of his game, an experienced manager looking to cut it at the next level, or with a young buck with an exciting new vision of the game no one is prepared for.
Don’t write anything off, keep an open mind, and pray the club don’t fu*k things up by giving Alan Pardew a chance to make it in the big time.
x
Grow up you soppy melt. Wipe those tears away. Turn off your internet and stop searching ‘Wenger good times 1998’.
It’s done.
Time to look at the future and what Arsenal are trying to do to manipulate the media, and your tiny little minds.
What a party that was! I mean, I wasn’t quite there, but in spirit, we all were. Fans from around the world tuned in to bid Arsene Wenger farewell, and to say #MerciArsene.
The man came, he saw, he conquered… he went a bit off the rails for 8 odd years, but overall, I think in time we’ll forgive the banter years, and maybe even embrace them.